Why Should National Standards Be Taught In Schools

The thought of establishing national standards for what should be taught in schools high school students, along with a test to see if the standards have been met, has been contemplated for years. National standards would level out the nation, and quite possibly catch us up to some of the countries who have out done us in the past few years. Besides, without standards, what do we have to shoot for? Critics argue that having standards and tests discourage schools from being innovative and inspiring creativity, but the emphasis on basic skills like reading and math, are much needed. America hasn’t been making the progress in these subjects as we should. If national standards don’t transpire, our test scores will continue to go down. There are also high school students who take these tests, and purposely do worse than

to other countries, you’ll see that we as a nation we are lacking in the education department. In the past year, 16 countries surpassed the United States in science, and 23 in math. Our math scores remained the same between 2003 and 2006; which means there is room for improvement. Even in the past couple of years, many nations have passed the United States, which means the standards need to be raised, or altered. For instance, if you compare the amount of days in a week, and the amount of instructional hours in the U.S., it varies all throughout the country. Education has traditionally been a right to the states, and we’re abusing that power. National standards would level the nation out. If every student learned the same things, and more of it, our test scores would sky rocket. In Finland and in Finnish schools, they use the same curriculum for every student, and they are the top scoring country. In Finnish schools they also don’t do as much standardized testing, which could be another reason they are so far ahead. The U.S. doesn’t require more or less instructional hours than other countries ahead of us, yet we still fall